> Ernst Meyer wrote, regarding SK:
>>
>> The mystic poet of the soul metamorphoses into the renegade
>> outlaw journalist who assaults the sanctuary of the church
>> and threatens its ministers.  It was as if the social reality
>> which Kierkegaard had so resolutely denied, suddenly exacted
>> its price, took its revenge on a soul that had persistently
>> defied it, and condemned him to become a hapless gladiator
>> in the arena of public curiosity, a martyr whose fate was
>> sealed even before the contest began. 

Kevin Solway replied:

> I see the metamorphosis in an altogether different light.  Yes,
> Kierkegaard defied the outside world for most of his life, I mean he
> overlooked the ugly truths that were sat physically right before his
> eyes, and thus blinded himself to the organic corruption of real-life
> Christianity, choosing instead to console himself with a poetic ideal.
> 
> But he knew that this was not always to be.  He spoke somewhere in the
> Journals of a time which he knew would come upon him and which he
> greatly feared.  He would always say to himself "I am not yet ready". 
> He was not ready to climb that next rung of the ladder, because it meant
> the terrifying ordeal of "venturing the voluntary"; it meant becoming an
> Apostle; and it meant going all the way, and leaving nothing for
> himself.
> 
> I think Kierkegaard had an intimation of his impending death (not to
> mention empty pockets), and this was enough to spur him on to make that
> final leap.  He didn't want to leave this world having only been a
> spectator and a poet, even though he was infinitely above all others
> even if he had not done what he finally did.
> 
> Kierkegaard's uncompromising and merciless attack on Christianity is
> only a small  symbol of the wonders that were happening deep in his
> soul.
> 

I find Kevin Solway's interpretation of Kierkegaard's
metamorphosis as the apocalyptic realization of Kierkegaard's
personality very persuasive, and an essential complement,
for which I thank him, to my own interpretation of that
metamorphosis as psycho-social decompensation. Such decompensation,
is not incompatible with apocalypsis.  It is the process,
the believer might say, by which deity achieves its ends.
After all, what greater psycho-social decompensation
is conceivable than death on a cross?

In the last two years of his life, Kierkegaard became
a journalist. Previously he had written in his Journals:

"Indeed, if the press were to hang a sign out like
every other trade, it would have to read: Here men are
demoralized in the shortest possible time on the largest
possible scale for the smallest possible price."

"What we need is a Pythagorean silence. There is a far greater
need for total abstaining societies which would not read
newspapers than for ones which do not drink alcohol."

"When truth conquers with the help of 10,000 yelling men -
even supposing that which is victorious is a truth: with the
form and manner of the victory, a far greater untruth is victorious."

"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined
by the word "Journalist." ... If I were a father and had a 
daughter who was seduced, I should not despair over her; I
would hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became
a journalist and continued to be one for five years, I would
give him up...."

(The foregoing is from a Kierkegaard anthology by Robert Bretall
p. 431, (Princeton 1947). Since I don't have a complete edition
of the Journals, I can't give more specific references.)

In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard had asserted
that Subjectivity is the Truth, clearly implying, if not stating
explicitly, that Objectivity is Untruth. We see then Kierkegaard,
in the year of his death, becoming a journalist to proclaim objective
truth about Christianity; sinking, in his own words, to "the lowest
depth to which people can sink before God, " and publishing
what by his own definition cannot be "truth".

Kierkegaard's attacks upon Christianity must be construed in
conjunction with "Training in Christianity", his last major work
before the ecclesioclastic diatribes. Of particular significance
is the retraction of the pseudonym Anti-Climacus when Training
in Christianity was republished in 1855. Kierkegaard
writes (and I translate freely from my German text):

"My earlier concept was: should it be possible to defend 
the establishment, then the only way possible is to
present the judgment concerning it in a poetical manner,
using a pseudonymous author, thereby relying on "grace"
in a twofold manner: not only that the Establishment
might obtain by "grace" forgiveness for the past, but
it might also by "grace" obtain a kind of dispensation
from the actual Imitatio Christi and from the actual effort
of being Christian. In this way the Establishment attains
in some measure to truth, it defends itself by condemning
itself, it acknowledges the Christian imperative,
makes confession of its remoteness without claiming such
confession as a genuine striving (repentance), but flies
to grace (asks forgiveness) even on account of the (mis)use
of grace."

In other words, Kierkegaard tells us he availed himself
of the pseudonym Anti-Climacus when he first published
Training in Christianity, because he wanted to give the
Establishment the opportunity to seek forgiveness for
not repenting. I find this sophistry unpersuasive.
Its intellectual and spiritual emptiness reflects, I think,
the calamity into which Kierkegaard was plunged by Bishop
Mynster's death. 

The retraction of the pseudonym helps with the interpretation
of the diatribes. When he attacks the established church,
he is defending the experience of Christianity which he described 
in Training in Christianity. When he wrote that book, the
Establishment which he is now attacking was already then
the object of his scorn, albeit muted and veiled so as not
to injure the episcopal father figure.  These facts bring the
diatribes into proper perspective.  Far from being a repudiation
they are a confirmation of Kierkegaard's faith.

A second point which deserves mention is that Kierkegaard's
diatribes against the established church can be justified
intellectually and spiritually only if, as Kiekegaard did,
one accepts the Scriptures, and especially the Gospels, as
literal truth. This Kierkegaard discussion list is not the
proper forum for exploring alternative hermeneutic pathways
to Christianity; but it should be said here that we may,
on grouds which are both intellectual and ethical, endorse or
adopt Kierkegaard's condemnation of established Christianity
only to the extent that we share his epistemic belief in the
literal truth of the New Testament.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com